ABC News projects the Republicans will retain control of the House of Representatives.

Investors in the healthcare sector have been waiting on the election in order to gauge the likelihood of new legislation or gridlock. Earlier this week, Bloomberg assessed how the sector might react to the different scenarios from today's election.

Total spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. rose 12.2% to nearly $425B in 2015, continuing a steep climb fueled by the introduction of expensive new drugs for cancer and infections, as well as price hikes for older drugs.

The annual report from IMS Health is likely to further fuel the fire of criticism from politicians, healthcare providers, and patients, stating medicines are out of reach and straining budgets.

It's been a "remarkable turn" in relative performance, says Deutsche Bank's David Bianco, noting health care was about 1K basis points ahead of the S&P 500 as recently as mid-August, but both are now about flat and neck-and-neck year-to-date."We find this reversal unwarranted and think health care could surge into year-end," says Bianco, and if the move doesn't come in 2015, it'll surely happen next year. As for valuation, health care is selling for 14.7x 2016E EPS vs. the S&P 500 at 16x - this even as health care's expected 6% sales growth should easily trump that of nominal GDP and the S&P 500. Biano sees 6-9% EPS growth, also better than the S&P.

Focus on the big picture, says Bianco: "We believe growth in health care products will stay strong owing to an aging population and increasing efforts to treat conditions with drugs and maximize the productivity of scarce healthcare labor with as many tools and conveniences as conceivable." He likes S&P 500 biotech, pharma, devices, equipment, supplies, tech, and tools, but is cautious on managed care and other healthcare services and facilities.

Some health insurers intend to join more state Obamacare exchanges next year, a development that could lead to more moderate price increases, or even prices falls, as competition increases.

In Washington state, for example, four insurers plan to sell coverage for the first time in 2015, while in Indiana, the number of providers could double to eight.

Of the insurers, UnitedHealth Group (UNH) is set to offer new plans in the states mentioned, adding to five exchanges that it already operates on.

The providers could be hoping to benefit from "second-mover" advantage whereby they will look to sign up the increased number of younger and healthier people who are forecast to purchase coverage next year as the penalty for not doing so increases. Those who are in worse health and bought coverage last year are expected to remain with their existing plans.

Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress (CAP) think tank, which is close to the White House, has called for President Obama to appoint a CEO with private-sector experience to oversee Obamacare's federal and state online health insurance exchanges. The idea is that the exchanges would run as e-commerce sites. The CEO would also oversee insurers and market regulations, although not Medicare or Medicaid. (CAP report)

Imaging equipment, insulin pumps, defibrillators and refrigerators that store blood and drugs are examples of networked gear that have remote access control features.

The devices' software is plagued by common security holes like weak passwords, lack of authentication to access, easy-to-determine default and hard-coded passwords and embedded web servers and administrative interfaces that make it easy to identify and manipulate devices once found on the network.

Hospital are apparently just waking up to the potential risks.

Last spring, the FDA and DHS issued a notice to the health care industry about problems with hard-coded passwords after researchers found issues in ~300 devices.

The Health Care M&A Report tallies Q1 2014 deal volume of 239 transactions valued at $49.6B. The number of deals for Q4 2013 and Q1 2013 were 278 and 212, respectively. The $49.6B total value was up 11% versus Q4 and up 217% versus Q1.

The most deals were consummated in long-term care (60), pharmaceuticals (33), biotech (26) and devices (25).